The balance between superstition and pragmatism.

This is an extension of the “Know That”/”Know How” application that takes some questions into further consideration. The first thing I’d address is Aristotle’s golden mean, which a lot like the idea of building the right reflexes for the right situations. This is mistaken a lot for moderation, but has more to do with knowing how to react in particular situations by applying the proper actions, and the best way to do with is with experience. Every time we fuse a new horizon with our old prejudice and create a new familiarity we tend to apply this to our everyday lives.

This leads into another issue, which is the problem of generalization. This comes about by human nature I believe. Generalizing is our way of explaining complexities we cannot possibly ever explain in detail. You will always get in debates with people where you hear comments like guys are like this, or older people are like that, and we are all guilty of this on some level, but what is more important is how to get around this problem. Since we cannot ever really explain the world beyond our personal experience, it would seem the only way to address the world is with what we best learn “how to” do that works for us.

An example of this is a debate I found myself in last night, where I was told I looked very young for my age, and my response was that it worked against me, because I attracted young girls who do not know what they want instead of mature women that do (a generalization). The response to this was women no matter what age do not know what they want (another generalization). From here of course comes another thing that people tend to do, which is cognitive dissonance. This is where we purposely gather ideas that fit the ideas we would like to believe, instead of looking at the ideas that might prove them wrong so we can hold onto our prejudices. This seems to be a natural human tendency where we do not alter this tendency till it is no longer possible to reject the thing that is obvious and we have to familiarize ourselves with the alien idea. Naturally this person starts to say all the marriages and relationships that do not work out and why you cannot trust anyone to be loyal. This to me sounds more like a projection of personal fear and insecurity due to their own personal experiences than how things truly are all the time.

This brings up my solution of how to get around the problem of generalizations, insecurity, and fear. I wrote before on the power of meaning. This is an important tool because it is a concept that shows if you walk through life knowing exactly how you want something and are not willing to change it unless you absolutely have to, you will be much more likely to get what you want in life or nothing, but nothing is better than something you did not want. The idea behind Aristotle’s golden mean is that we might not always hit the target we want right at the center in the things we do, but life is this ongoing process of continuing to aim in the right direction for the things we want, and continue to perfect our aim in order to at least come as close as possible to what we want in each pursuit, and then with each pursuit we can adjust our aim a little based on prior experiences.

Sometimes research can be an experience that will alter the way we look at the world. Perhaps if we have only had certain kinds of experiences, we may come to the conclusion that things must always work a certain way, but then when we look at a demographic of statistic, we will see something much different. I myself have not had a very successful relationship in one-way or another, but I also do not give up hope, because of research and from the few examples that look like they are working. You would not ask what kind of weight lifting diet to pursue from a skinny person giving advice. You would look to someone who has a strong looking body. You would not look at someone for dieting tips that was fat. You talk to someone skinny. You do not look at people with failed relationships and marriages for advice on how to have a good relationship and marriage. This is why I have a hard time believing someone who tells me all the reasons something is likely to fail and nobody can be trusted. I’m only hearing personal insecurity and fear based on personal failure and only seeing incidents of the same in their friends and relatives. It seems the way to aim at the mean of something is to seek out people who are doing the right things for the results you want.

Let’s take a look at some concepts that would make a more stable marriage. First it can be stated that psychology studies show people do not start managing to weigh the long term benefits of actions till they near thirty compared to younger people who act more on impulse for more immediate gratification, so age is a sign of greater stability and knowing more what we want longer term. We can also see that although everyone’s levels of extroversion and neuroticism vary, these two things also to go down with age in everyone, so this is a sign of greater stability too. People who cohabitate before marriage are more likely to divorce in sociological studies, but one variable to be aware of is it is not cohabitation in itself, but the mentality that comes with doing so. People who cohabitate as a means of “trying things out” to see if they can work are the ones who divorce more, but people who move in already knowing they intend to get married and just do not have the finances and resources to do so right away will more likely stay together. Maybe we should not move in with people if we know we are not ready to marry anyone. We can learn how to live with others by having roommates. Roommates are a good way to learn how to deal with others. The top five reasons people divorce in the United States are: Poor communication, Financial problems, A lack of commitment to the marriage, A dramatic change in priorities, and Infidelity, and if there is one variable all of these correlate strongly with it is age. Young people do not communicate as well, have good finances compared older people, have as great a commitment, have stable priorities, and are still playing the field. One more study is that red states have higher divorce rates than blue states, and the reason I can think of for this one as well is age, because red states have more religious people who do not believe in sex before marriage and/or abortion, so they get married to have sex and kids, or they get pregnant and do not abort and marry the parent. We do not know anything matter a factly in life, but we do have the ability to point our desires in the direction of the things that seem to work, and in the process of doing so we can get closer to and better at the things we desire. Beyond age we can see what kinds of people tend to be more stable in particular situations and realize that these are the kinds of features we should look for in others if we are likely to come close to the same things.

There is one more issue I would like to address here, and that is superstition. Superstition can be an enemy or a friend I believe. Someone like Richard Dawkins would likely argue that all superstition is bad, and the worst of course would be religion, but I take the side of William James more, who believed that pragmatism is all that really matters. Religion can be a positive thing in our lives if we can use it for pragmatic ends that help us get the things we desire in life better than without it. I part a lot with Dawkins on the idea that religion is a meme that had a function once and no longer does, because religion is the equivalent of superstition to me. Humans will likely always be superstitious. That means even if we rid ourselves of religious ideas, we would still buy into ideologies like Marxism and stories like Forest Gump, as pragmatic ways to deal with our issues. The meme argument to me is equivalent to saying we struggled to find food for so long and now our bodies still have this desire to overeat, because evolutionarily we did not know when we would eat again, therefore we should not ever eat again. Obviously we need to eat in order to live. We just need a pragmatic method of eating that does not harm us; very much like Aristotle’s mean, where we develop the proper virtue ethics to suit an environment and habitat in order to flourish the best way possible. Superstition can be a tool that helps us pull ourselves out of the hard times in life, because the stories and beliefs help us escape the current pain we are dealing with, or even give us the idea to try something we would not have thought was possible had we just relied on our day to day interactions with people on the street. On the other hand we might use our superstition to become complacent, and the example I used before was people who watch movies as a way to pass time and not actually use the ideas for potential action. This would lead to a dream state where we never actually achieve the ends we desire, because they are not realistic or pragmatic.

There can also be a problem with pragmatism. What if we learned to be a good criminal, because through experience it proved to be the best way to survive in the environment we grew up in? If we are not flexible we would not be able to adapt well to other environments where this is not acceptable behavior. Just because we manage to be pragmatic does not mean we learned how to live well, or in a way that others will accept. This is where superstition would allow us to imagine a way to be a different kind of person in particular actions, even if nobody else around us is doing them, or we never saw them work. Sometimes watching movies or reading books and studies about other ways people can be and are will allow our superstition to motivate us in a way we would not have thought possible through pure pragmatic experience. Of course it is putting a dream into action and then seeing if it is pragmatic that seems to be the best combination. The proper balance then seems to be to do what seems realistic, but to try what might not be and through trial an error we can become more pragmatic in more realistic ways that are possibly superior to those who fear chance or dreams in the same environments too much and cannot find their golden means in life. I would add that taking our time when getting to know people seems to be more pragmatic in most cases because we do not put our hearts on our sleeves, which makes us look foolish, and can take more time to feel people out and see if they fit our dreams.

Weight lifting philosophy.

I started doing something a little different with my routine that I don’t normally try and I’ve seen pretty good results, so I decided to share it with anyone who wants to read it. I usually gain weight in the winter and this is the first winter…I think ever where the opposite has happened. In fact, I’ve dropped down to a lean 175 lbs (I’m 5’9) with a body fat of 15%, which is pretty good for a guy, and I’ll likely lose more fat.

First of all, I’m fairly sedentary most of the time, believe it or not. This brings me to the first point, which is 70-80% of physique is diet and nothing more. The way to get a lean build is to multiply your ideal weight by 10-12, but I’d say 12, because we’re talking ideal weight and not actual weight. If I want to weigh about 180 lbs., I’d multiply that by 12 and have a 2000 calories diet. From here I balance the caloric intake by measuring my food each evening to take with me the next day. The new ratio I played with is 40% protein, 30% carbohydrate, and 30% fat. I don’t know of anyone else who advocates this balance, but I think it’s perfect for the student or white collar person who isn’t that active, but wants to lift weights and a jog a little some days. I increased my fat and decreased my carbohydrates, and the reason this has caused so much weight loss is because I’m sedentary, so the excess carbs don’t turn into fat, and at the same time the fat and protein fill me up longer. This is good because high carbohydrate diets can cause diabetes, and diets high in saturated fat can cause high cholesterol. I just add a lot of olive oil to my food. I even put it in protein shakes (it tastes amazing). Other things to take note of are I have six small meals a day to keep the metabolism running, and to spread protein intake out to every few hours so it all absorbs the best it can. All the food of course is whole grains, vegetables, and lean meats with my shakes, and no processed stuff. Believe it or not, it only costs me about $30-40 a week for food to eat this clean.

Second of all, I changed my lifting routine in a way I never have that has shown great progress. Since I’m not eating a high calorie diet anymore, I found myself losing a lot of strength in the gym as my weight dropped. Part of this is obviously less fuel, but the other part is less carbohydrates for energy to run on. All I did to keep strength up was to do less. If you aren’t noticing a pattern, it’s that less it actually more in a lot of ways. Fewer calories are more shape and a bigger look. Even as you get smaller you look bigger, because as you get more defined it creates an illusion of size when muscle jumps out. Doing fewer sets in the gym and getting to the heaviest set as quick as possible is the other secret to staying strong when on lower calorie intake. What I do now it lift very heavy on the basic movements of bench, squat, and deadlift, and I get to the heaviest set within the least warm up sets needed. For example, a regular day at the gym would include starting with a flat bench doing 3 sets of 3. I’ll start with one set with a plate on each side, another set with 30lbs. less than the max weight, and then the max weight. For the incline bench I only do 30lbs. less than the max weight for one set, and then go right to the heaviest set, because I warmed up on the flat already. After this I can 2 sets of 8-12 on the lighter movements. I’ll do a couple sets of dips with a warm up and then a heavy, and finally a couple sets of curls, where one set is 30 lbs. less than the max followed by one max set of curls. The workouts only last 30 to 45 minutes, but the strength gains work great, and with the combination of fat loss it makes the muscles jump right out. You only need to do three days of these short lifting routines a week to get the whole body and jog a couple miles a couple days a week for cardio. The rest is all in the food.

The "Know That"/"Know How" application.

The know that/know how argument has been around for some time. I’m not going to get into what I think the proper route to knowledge is, but I would like to argue that the “know how” is much more important in life than the “know that” to an extent. I could know that Barack Obama is President, but what does this do for me unless I also know that this knowledge might be useful somewhere in my in everyday activities? To know that people might judge me based on the fact I don’t know this is the reason I would care to know. The real reason I’d want to know that would be because I’d like people to think I’m not stupid, and to know that is likely because of a prior interaction that taught me to know how people will treat me if I didn’t know that information. Obviously there’s a number of situations we come across in life where we lack experience and we’ll create abstractions of what we think will happen under certain conditions and be wrong. That’s because we don’t have true knowledge. The argument however, is that “knowledge that” is only useful if it can be used as “knowledge how”, and the way we reach “knowledge how” is only through the pain of not “knowing that” in a prior altercation where we didn’t “know how” to use “knowledge that” we had or lacked the knowledge in the first place that made us learn “knowledge that” we could apply later to spare future embarrassment, failure, or loss. To know that Barack Obama is President is because we either believe or know how this information will possibly be useful in action and interaction with others. The belief of some things may not be true, but the reason we believe anything in the first place is because of some prior know how that made us question a potential later action that could bring about a consequence we’d see in our favor. In other words, a life of action and practical application is the best life lived. Some act too much without thinking, while others think too much without acting. Aristotle would argue for the mean, which a lot of people have confused for moderation. The mean is a little different. It means to know how to act in the right situation at the right time. It’s kind of like building the right kinds of reflexes. If we have excesses or deficiencies in a given situation, we need to adjust closer to the mean. It’s good to be very angry sometimes or not too angry in other cases. Moderation would mean we always act a certain temperament in most situations. One more Ancient idea that appealed to me was the idea of happiness. Today we think of happiness as a psychological state that can come or go. For Ancients it was an activity that took place over an entire life, and if one was living a virtuous life they’d have a happier life overall.

For myself, the virtuous life is the life of action. Life shouldn’t be about contemplation or how much one can know, because nobody cares what one can know without an ability to produce actions from them. I can’t really say that producing actions will always make us happy. I question if even doing the “right” actions in our lives will really make us happy. From a sociobiological perspective, life isn’t about being happy, but passing on genes and survival. That means if being miserable helps us survive in certain environments it’s the proper way to live. I personally lean toward the sociobiologists. Looking back on my own life I can only see struggle, misery, and conflict, and I believe it’s only through struggle and conflict that we actually become better people. These are not happy experiences, but the outcome always makes us better people who are better able to survive in more kinds of environments. Going back to Aristotle, I can say I agree that finding the mean is and building the right reflexes to fit new situations is the proper mode of living. Even if we don’t find happiness, we’ll learn to live better. These virtue ethics part from the deontologists like Kant, or the utilitarians like Bentham. It’s more about developing a character for as many seasons as possible. Maybe we won’t be happy in the ancient sense for an entire life, even if we do all the right things, but we will be more adaptable and therefore more powerful in new situations where we need to know how to survive and overcome knew obstacles and competition.

We want the “know how” reflexes that will give us the most control in our situations with others. There’s so many kinds of people in the world, and so many different cultures, and subcultures, that it might be a question of where to start, but I’d say the starting point is rather easy. You just have to think about what interests you and attempt to get good at it, and through that experience you’ll likely gain more interests. The harder part for some people is that they might find things they like and never unlock the potential to use their “know that” and create a “know how” out of it. Let me put it this way. There are five activities that stand out to me as the activities people do because they’re bored. They are to eat, sleep, get wasted, watch movies/TV, and masturbate. These five things don’t take any skill. Some of them are things we’ve been born with a natural inclination toward, and the others are just passive activities. We know how to do these things, but they’re simple action skills, because they never took struggle or conflict to acquire them, and as I said earlier, it’s the struggle and conflict in life that force us to be better people. Someone might argue that watching movies is a good way to become cultured and to understand things about life better through the stories it teaches, and I’ll say that to “know that” about culture and life is worthless unless we can apply that knowledge to action, and it’s because most people don’t apply the watching of a movie to action that they fail to use the knowledge for anything useful. If we became good at deconstructing the meanings of movies as we watched them to have conversation and/or debate about the meanings of them with others, we’d be engaging in an activity that could be a “know how” activity, because we’re using it as a tool to get better at interacting with others and possibly having the ability to gain control over the direction of the interaction, because of the power of our knowledge and the ability to use it. Once we find something we enjoy, we need to seek out others who enjoy the same so we can use the thing we enjoy as a tool to get others to inquire about what they’re doing and thinking when they interact in the activity as well. A movie doesn’t have to be passive and some of us can be the catalyst to set the viewing of such into action with others in our own lives. I myself don’t relate well to movies, so I find more enjoyment in reading textbook style knowledge I think will help me in a career or debate, but I believe most activities that are passive for most can be turned into power tools for some. Those who can “know how” to turn the knowledge of “knowing that” into a weapon or tool the shape the direction of interaction have gained a tool or weapon of power. This parts from modern philosophy in some ways in the sense that moderns tend to think the best way to come to an understanding of knowledge is to keep to be an individual who wanders in the wilderness or hides in dim lit rooms reading away, but I’m more of an ancient that believes the best place to gain knowledge is right in the city, because we’re social creatures by nature, and through dialect with others we gain the most knowledge. Through conflict and struggle with others we become the best adapted for survival.

Postmodern critiques and the nature of power.

Postmodern critiques and the nature of power.
I found myself rather irritated in a class today where we discussed the categories of standpoints women have, and the intersectionality of other minority groups within women based on a text we’ve been reading. The problem I had with this book to begin with we’ve been reading is that it’s a feminist inquiry book where the author points out three different feminist perspectives, which are feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory, and feminist post modernism. The author takes the stance of standpoint theory, but I believe she completely butchers standpoint theory. I researched these theories outside of the text and standpoint theory has its root in a Marxist concept where the dominant group of bourgeoisie can only see the surface of what those in the working class experience. The working class participants each experience life as a proletariat from the standpoint of one, but they don’t recognize themselves as a group. It’s not till they realize they’re experiencing the same standpoint as a class that they can unify and overthrow the bourgeoisie. The postmodern assault on this when applied to feminism is that women from different parts of the world don’t all share the same female values like the working class does in capitalism, so they can’t unify under the same banner of women’s rights the way workers can. First world women seek the means of sexual reproductive rights as a standpoint for their belief. They should therefore have a choice over the legality of reproduction rights because they own the sexual means of reproduction. Third world women are more focused on equality in wealth and to get out of poverty. Women of color are more focused on being equal in race as well as sex if not more, and the list goes on. I point this out to the professor and he makes the claim that they’re all arguing from their standpoints and that’s how she applies standpoint theory. If that’s the case she’s butchering standpoint theory and post modernizing it where we’re all subjective and see things different ways and there is no one set way of seeing ourselves together. The criticism of the feminist post modernism of course is that they want to get rid of the categories of groupings we place people in, but in doing this we’d eventually come back to the enlightenment where everyone is seen as an individual and not a group with individual rights and views and so on. We didn’t discuss all this in class of course. These are just my thoughts. The only part that took place in class is where I called the author’s flaw on standpoint theory to the professor and feel he talked around my critique instead of addressing it.

This is where the class took on the debate that refers to the problem I had in particular with their stance toward categorization and power. They didn’t realize it, but they were arguing from a postmodern perspective about the issues at hand. The professor points out the different kinds of feminism we discussed, which were conservative, liberal, socialist, black, and postmodern. Everyone starts making the argument that the problem is it’s because we put people in categories based on race and gender that creates the problem in the first place, because this is what makes them different even though we’re very similar biologically. Someone even said something about the nature of putting things in categories is what creates the problem. I was all alone in my rebuttal. I said that it’s not the nature of putting things in categories that’s the problem. It’s that putting things in categories is our nature, because life is about power. There will always be in and out groups, dominant and subordinate groups, and a hierarchy that structures how we exist within society. You can look for what we have in common, but the only the way we do this is by finding what another group of people don’t have in common with us. Even if we familiarize ourselves on commonalities with those we fist saw as alien, we will only fuse with and create new outsiders. The argument that the fusion of horizons is how we can familiarize with the alien and can end prejudice falls short of the fact that it ignores that there’s always a new horizon that is alien upon the last fusion. No matter how far back we go in history there was always groups we defined ourselves with and groups we didn’t. Even Aristotle points out that the telos of a knife is the fact that it cuts, but what defines it from other knives is how well it cuts. Obviously whoever has the authority to decide one knife cuts better than another has the power over it. The knife is inanimate though, and when we can dominate others with the authority of categorizing them into what is better or worse we exert power over them within a society. It’s not till the subordinate group manages to get enough power to redefine itself that it can manage its way into the in group, but upon doing so a new out group will be created. Life is about power and although many talk around it and try to ignore it they still address it without realizing it. In the dialect between Socrates and Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, they debate what justice is, and Thrasymachus claims injustice is better because it’s what benefits the stronger. We feed sheep to fatten them up so we can eat them. We look like we’re being kind but it’s to benefit ourselves. Socrates argues that justice is to benefit the weaker, but when we benefit the weaker it’s not because it’s good in itself for the sake of it, but because we can benefit ourselves in the process. Even if both parties gain from the interaction, the fact is we don’t do anything for people unless we can get something to benefit ourselves from doing so in the process. This is a form of soft power, where we seek to get people to desire the thing we wanted them to instead of physically coercing them, which is hard power. Soft power is the way of the future, because although some may wield soft power by having the legitimate physical means to back it up, others who would appear to be on an equal playing field are still not, because in every relationship there’s a dominant and a subordinate whether we see it obviously or not. The best way to exert power over someone without them thinking you’re doing so is by giving them several options, but you always create incentives to make yours the most appealing or easiest to attain. This gives them the feeling they’re making their own choice while they tend to head in the direction you wanted them too. All interactions have a dominant and subordinate and all interactions are struggles over power. When we’re finally on equal footing it’s because we have created solidarity among ourselves as a group of one against another group, and even when our group grows large enough there will be a hierarchy in that group where some dominate others. This is our nature and nature is a power struggle. What happens when we move from physical coercion to verbal and mental is how we become “civilized”, because the ability to oppress the will through symbols and language is the newest phase in the evolution of humanity. All battles at some point in the future will be about competition on a abstract playing field of verbal and psychological coercion with the back up threat that the physical force is possible but never has to be used anymore.

The power of meaning.

The power of meaning.
The writings I have in my notes on the politics of social technology are about ten pages long, so I'm just going over a couple pages at a time and posting them. This way anybody semi interested doesn't get too overly bored or overwhelmed.

The next question is how do these politics become elevated by technology besides changing the ways of objective (the physical world’s) life? The answer I have for this goes back to hunter-gatherer. What helped us develop the ability to survive beyond epinephrine (fight or flight chemical in the brain) is the ability to have abstract thought. This ability could help us perceive where prey was in our minds that disappeared from sight. The ability to do this gave hunters an ability to talk about what wasn’t in front of them and develop plans to track down and attack the prey. This ability to imagine, create, and dream narratives of the things that can’t be seen has transcended with us over time, but we now use it to theorize about what might be physically possible before putting new ideas into action more often than hunting prey. When we fail at an action we have to readjust our theories and try again and that’s one of life’s main processes for survival or to better our lives beyond survival. There is an element of this I’d argue that becomes a burden more than a reward. The ability to think about what isn’t there when it isn’t in front of us is a great tool for things that used to be in front of us, and we’d like to know how to confront them best if we assume there’s a probability of them being back in front of us again. However, there’s also a problem when one of two things happen. When we assume the thing that will act a certain way is a person, they don’t always come back in the form we think they would, because they too have the ability to imagine the world a certain way different from us and act on those dreams. It’s the ability to understand our desires best that gives us leverage in a confrontation. What we tend to do is let our imagination tell us how we’d like things to be, and in reality we’re willing to surrender the meanings of certain words to another in order for the dream to become a reality. This is a form of trade off where we desire to attain one label by giving up the meaning of another instead of maintaining both and we lose power. For example, when I ask if we’re friends and you say yes, but we only hang out once a month and my definition of a friend is someone I see once a week, it’s only when the definition is mutual that we have real friendship. We obviously won’t hold elements of friend in a holistic sense but if we have enough partial definitions that overlap we can have mutual ground. You may however have something I want like a cool video game and it’s because I desire to play it those few times I see you that I’m willing to concede to your meaning of friendship in order to get to the ends I desire. My dream was the video game and yours was friendship on your definition. We’re playing out what seems like the same dream in our reality till one person communicates what they believe is happening. We either maintain the reality and let the new meanings stick to our actions, or we call off the actions in order to assert our desired meanings. There may be other cases where we do communicate right away, but one person will surrender their meaning even after communication for a lower grade their desire rather than nothing. This occurs because the social market has subjective value and we convince ourselves that what someone has to offer is of higher grade than anyone else simply because it’s from them, even if the quality of the product is lower than what we could get elsewhere. Why would we do this? It’s because we aren’t bargaining goods, but services from people. The service of company by some people is held at a higher value even if we don’t get it as often as we want, because we’re willing to convince ourselves that this person is more special than someone else out there we might come across. When we tie a subjective value of higher meaning to the label a person can give us over the original meaning of what we like from people in general, we give them over us. It’s only through the conflict of experience with these people that we learn what we think they could be versus what they are and will be are very different, and this is when we finally move away from them back into the market. If we really want water to meet at its own level we will not let ourselves change the definition of our desires and wait till someone who feels the same can meet them. Sometimes we may find that after enough time our desires aren’t realistic, but this is better than changing our meanings for others in trade offs of one meaning to sacrifice it for another.

The second flaw that can be made in the imagination are the things we imagine that weren’t ever objects in our lives. Unlike people we thought may come back in a way we assumed they would, these things are intangibles. We get these ideas by getting a conglomeration of all past physical experiences through our perceptions and create combinations of these things in our minds that don’t actually exist in reality. For example, heaven brings a picture to our minds based on all things we’ve actually come into contact with and we assemble a picture of something we’ve never seen based on what we have. I’d argue the first flaw in the last paragraph was about physical interactions that reflect the natural language, and this second scenario about heaven is the metalanguage. The metalanguage represents ideas that are inventions of the minds that made up of words that represent natural objects of the world. The natural language is layer one once removed representing the objective world, and the meta is layer two representing layer one, and sometimes we combine both layers together into a third layer. For example, there’s a word for sun, which we can see (layer one of natural language). Then there’s a word for god that we can’t see (layer one of metalanguage). Then we combine the ideas of the seen an unseen into one and say god is the sun (layer two spoken about and representing layer one) and it has powers over us (layer three describing layer two). The metalanguage is the description of abilities the world has that we invent without testing them empirically, and sometimes never can test them that way. The metalanguage is the kind that exists in religion and laws. It’s only when the language is up to date it can better represent the times that it reflects closer to objective reality. If the laws are flexible to change with a society to reflect the desires of the people in a context, then the laws will be closer to reflecting the way people choose to live. However, if a religious way of life or law isn’t adapted to constant changes it reflects older ways of life that aren’t in our favor. Just as we may assume people will be other than they actually are based on dreams we create that are based on the past interactions we had with them and merely reflect who they were and can be. The dreams can carry into the present without reflecting the present mode of reality, but our actions on the dreams create new realities. It’s the epiphenomenona of the meaning from our past being placed on other context in our present that the meaning changes, or the meaning of the present is altered to fit the present, so we accept it rather than seek to change it. It’s only after conflict has occurred enough times between two people that we learn to respect each other, and develop feelings for each other. The reason there is conflict is because someone won’t surrender their meaning for what another sees as a greater meaning they could both share, but in giving up this meaning for the other person’s greater meaning we are giving them power over us if the greater meaning isn’t one we truly hold in our hearts mutually. If we do find mutual meaning without sacrifice in enough partials then we can finally stop taking from each other what someone has to offer, and start giving one another because the product is no longer important in itself as much as who it comes from and this giving is reciprocal so it doesn’t look like taking anymore. That’s because the product is in lie with the person as we intended instead of seeking to shape them in the product of our meaning. This also only works when water meets at the same level because both people haven’t altered meaning of desired actions and came to take on an equal playing field instead of one person taking while another changes meaning to take on a lower grade in return.

Morality and technology.

morality and technology.
Due to my inability to sleep I’ll add on to the social politics of Internet communication. I have a lot to say so I suppose I’ll start at what feels appropriate. In a writing sometime back I wrote about morality from an emotional perspective. The point being made was that natural morality versus synthetic morality is more potent, embedded, and realistic, where synthetic is more of an extension of the moral through religious scripture. In other words, natural morality is created through confrontation like the kind seen in the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s only by earning respect by giving rewards when we’re getting what we want that we’ll get what we want back in return or move onto another person who may be more willing to meet at the same level as us. It can be seen as social market competition. I’d argue that synthetic morality in scripture was originally written to represent the struggles that took place at the time of their writings, so people could have the answers about how to live right in the temporal cultures they were created in. This would let the following generation avoid the prisoner dilemma by teaching the struggle that took place in the generation prior, and in turn wouldn’t have to continue being acted out to reach the same state of morality. Morality could then transcend into the following generation and by living properly we could have a stable civilization. It’s obvious religion and laws played a vital role in the structuring of the boundaries of how we are taught to live proper. I’d argue however that when these concepts try to transcend over time and culture two things happen. The first is over time the object of prior physical struggle of daily life changes, but the words from prior contexts stay within a language of a culture itself. The objects of the subjects no longer exists or is so far removed from the numerous transitions over time that the subjects align differently with newly evolved objects of action (people’s lifestyles). There can also be epiphenomenalism of objects of action that arise next to subjects tied to different objects, but the words of one object are transferred in meaning onto another. An example could be the rise of capitalism and the protestant work ethic. Capitalism was in conflict with the protestant way of life, so words like ambition in business had to be neutralized by giving them positive connotation, so ambition could also be something Christian like being ambitious in our faith. At the same time positive words already in protestant mentality could be transferred onto business making the act seem more righteous and less greedy. Different cultures have epiphenomenalism to one another and the transfer of the meanings of the way we live in a culture that has a scripture or law written one way that can then be applied to how we live to today in a different culture. I’d argue however, that the temporal/cultural changes in ways of life and meanings of words have changed so much that we tend to act out of our favor and since technology is causing the way of life to change faster to point that even within generations the rules are different, we have no choice but to play out the prisoner dilemma more frequently and keep rewriting the rules of how to live moral and proper to constant changing words, new words, and new objective human actions.

The question may be, what do morals and religion have to do with social technology and how it elevates politics? I’d say that social technology changes to rules of interaction on a level so frequent that the written rules of how to live proper are constantly changing with it. That means the only proper way to live is through conflict of social interaction on these constant new horizons. At this point I’ll address another issue that helps relate this complexity to our everyday lives. I’d argue there is a lexical language and my version of a metalanguage. The lexical language is the natural language that transcends time and space. It can be seen as holistic in a sense. These are possible because some objects don’t change fast enough over time for there not to always be words to represent them. It’s because of these universals that all the partials that overlap into the whole have partials in common with each other. This means I can communicate with someone from another culture and language simply by pointing out the objects (signified things) and labeling them with the subjects (signifier). Then someone else can point to the same object and place their signifier different than mine on it so we understand each other. Objects like the sun, earth, rocks, and even emotional expressions on faces are all natural and part of the natural language. Some objects are manmade, but even these can transcend in some cultures, such as industrial cultures can have similar objects like skyscrapers and video games that other parts of the world don’t. The metalanguage on the other hand signifies things that have no objects and the partials are more subjective, because we can buy into or invent their meaning. When I say god, everyone gets a different idea in his or her head. When we say someone is prejudice we’re claiming an idea that can’t be seen. These metawords can change meaning much more quickly over time. These I would argue are the words of scripture and law. Many of the objects still exist in writings that we can relate to because they lexical, but they’re tied into metawords that mean new things more frequently. It’s because technology expands boundaries of cultural possibility that more and more sub genres of lifestyle can be created from the original norms, and it’s this that makes the written morality from the age before that keeps becoming outdated faster ever before from old way of interacting. In other words, morality that isn’t defined through conflict is morality for the weak. This is because the conquering of the old horizon may still be lived out as proper while new horizon is eclipsing it. Everyone who can’t change from the old way of doing things are the first to be dominated by the new way. I’d argue that if Christian morals can’t adapt to the constant changes by changing its meaning of scripture in the church quickly enough, it will be eclipsed by a new religion. Even if it does change quickly enough it will only be called Christian in name, but practice may be very different.

The problem is they teach giving oneself to another in hopes that they will give the same back out of righteousness, but this is only true today within a sub genre of a cultural group that have identified with each other on an emotional level that they will treat each other right out of respect in order to maintain the existence of the unit or group. The human self-interest is only overcome when the individuals collect into a group that seeks strength through solidarity within the greater society of other sub genres. At this point it becomes the group interest, and the groups are partials that overlap have the societal interest. However, since the boundaries of society are always shifting faster with technology, we keep creating more new partials or cutting the pie slices thinner of society. Eventually old partial groups become obsolete and are absorbed into new partials to compete once again. It’s the constant changing of subcultures within greater culture that change the groups and the rules of morality, so that being giving is giving to new strangers who have self interests that don’t coincide with ours, and the objects of reality and lifestyle change so quick that the set way of living right and moral can never apply beyond a handful of people we’ve bonded to within our own lifetime. The reason strangers interests don’t coincide with ours the way they did in early societies is because the objective way of life changed much slower. Being giving within a community kept that community stable, the way giving in a church keeps the church community stable. If everyone in the community is giving we have a good community. The numerous institutions in the greater community at larger are constantly changing though and since they overlap each other we have spillover of people from one institution into another. The philosophy of morals therefore is not to give, but to take, and when we make sure we don’t change the meaning of what we want to take we won’t get screwed over. When two people want to take the same thing from each other at a given point, then it’s reverse giving, and two negatives make a positive. If we both want to get sex from each other, we are both giving each other sex to each other from the inverse perspective. This inverse of giving is only created after two people take from each other enough over the long term that appears reciprocal and we’ve developed emotions for each other that make us want to uphold the unit of us instead of you and I.

The politics of social interactions through technology.

The politics of social interactions through technology.
I haven’t written anything in a while. In part it’s due to partial lack of brainstorms, but it’s also due to so much new information coming in that I’m readjusting to new ideas. I do have one thing I’d like to talk about of course or I wouldn’t have written anything today. I deleted all my social networks and aim off my computer. I managed to cut 90% of my interactions out of my life, and life has become very peaceful since then. Having the artificial extension of my environment felt like the rat experiments where there’s a button to press and each time a piece of cheese comes out. The next one has a piece of cheese come out every third time a rat presses the button. The last rat gets rewarded randomly and presses the button the most frequently. Social interactions online were much like the third rat where I was pressing the button for random rewards and became addicted to possible attention that was more torturous than pleasant.

I have two different concepts to bring up in this writing. The first is the age of technology and social interactions. Our environments influence us all and social networks online artificially extend this environment. What this does is it raises the politics of social interactions. The reason it’s able to do this is because the extension is artificial. A regular interaction in person allows certain components to be in place where there is a power struggle amongst those who are less than friends. It’s basically a game of prisoners dilemma where I make a move in hopes of getting the reward I desire from you for my effort. The simplest example of this is done in everyday speech. When I say hello, I only do so because I hope you say hello back to me. If you don’t say hello back I learn I’m not receiving the reward I desire and stop saying hello when I see you. If we learn to cooperate we start saying hello every time we see each other. Since we’re all selfish our interactions are based on personal desire. Wherever our desire lies is what dictates our actions. If we get comfortable saying hello then perhaps I may desire to spend time with you and have a few drinks. You may desire to hang out too and so this is how friendships form. Each level of cooperation brings two people closer on each level. We only seem to have high levels of this cooperation with a handful of individuals we consider our true friends.

To make this slightly more complex now we can say two people are interacting, but have different end desires in mind. They don’t actually know this though, because means are very similar most of the way to the ends. In this case we can say two people are on what one person considers a date, and the other person sees as just two people hanging out. Person A thinks we’re hanging out because we’re bonding on a more than friendly level. Person B thinks we’re just having a good time as friends. Maybe we eat dinner together and then go back to my place to watch a movie. Let’s add another complex level to the situation. We could say person B realizes halfway through the night that this is a date, but doesn’t desire more than the company. Person A wants to have sex at the end of the night. Person B keeps hanging out because they enjoy the company and then leave at the end of the night, so person A suddenly feels let down and perhaps used. I’d argue person B didn’t use person A consciously. Person B liked the company and didn’t think anything more was going to happen. It’s because person A had a different idea in their head that they let themselves down. This means person A will either realize their intentions were in the wrong place, or they’ll try dating again till they can eventually have sex. Person B might desire a relationship and person A might want just sex. If person A gets sex they’ll toss person B to the curb. If person B holds out long enough they can get person A develop emotions for them, so when they finally do have sex with them, they’ll have grown attached to them. Person B may however be conflicted and have thought they wanted a relationship, but they really just enjoy the attention of person A wanting to label the relationship more than a friendship without having to dedicate to just them. This is the politics of interaction. Eventually water meets at its own level and the two people cooperate on where they are mutual and nothing more. If they are mutual on nothing they’ll cease interactions.

The question then becomes, how do we get around this? I like to refer to Plato’s theory of forms. It takes place in a cave where prisoners are chained so their heads can only face forward. Behind them are torches with objects passing in front of them. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall in front of them projected by the light. They can’t actually see the light, but what is produced by it. The light presents the truth. They can only see reflections of the truth and guess what it is by describing what is on the wall to one another. One prisoner breaks free and turns around to see the real objects. He then runs outside and the sun blinds him. He can’t handle seeing this level of truth yet. He begins seeing blurry versions of new objects and then finally can see real objects in the light of the sun. The point I’m making is that desire should never be more than what has been experienced first hand from others. The reason person A and B in my example keep running into problems is because they desire something we all have the human capacity to do and that’s abstract thought. We are all given the ability to dream, imagine, and create story narratives about what someone could be in our lives. We do this all the time everyday, but these dreams are just reflections of what could be experienced. What I do personally is remind myself that these are just dreams and what is real potential should never be much more than what has been experienced. If I ate bologna and bread, then desired to put them together, my expectations shouldn’t much more than what I have already experienced with the two separate. The same is true for people. If we talk and hang out then I should assume that a whole lot more might not come of this level of interaction. Expectation in others should never be much greater than what has already happened. Expectations in ourselves can be as high as we like because we have more experience with ourselves than anyone else does. You don’t have to play such intense games of prisoners dilemma if the expectations aren’t very high to begin with.

How does the Internet play into this? The Internet is like Plato’s cave of expectation where the dreams are now physically seen, but still artificial projections of real people in our lives and of themselves. The point is that social technology allows a higher level of politics because it allows people to communicate desires without actually giving you their physical company. Let’s say our expectations are fairly low and we just desire the company of someone who has given us their company before. Communication devices allow others to contact us when they are bored or lonely from anywhere and get the emotional attention they desire without giving us their physical company. Obviously someone is getting over in this situation if one person desires company and another only desires conversation. One reason may be that they get enough physical interaction with others in their life, but those they physically interact with don’t give them the level of emotional input they desire, so they subsidize it with you from a distance. The way I managed to get around this in my own life is to make the technological supply unavailable for people to reach me with. I have a phone, but even when I receive a call I take it right to the point of my desire. I ask what they want and if they aren’t making plans to spend time with me, I tell them I’m busy. If they aren’t coordinating plans to hang out with me I tell them I have to go and to call when they want to hang out. If you aren’t in front of me you don’t matter. If you are in front of me it’s because you’ve chosen to care today enough to be here. The next stage is, are they going to invite me to a place I’d like to be with them? Perhaps they want to invite me to a party with people I don’t like, and to this I’d have to say, call me when you want to do something with just us, or at a place I can appreciate. I call the process channeling. It’s not about doing what you think will make others happy in hopes of getting what you want eventually. It’s about knowing exactly what you want, being blunt about it, keeping the expectations realistic, and making yourself unavailable in all the ways and places that aren’t comfortable for you till other people realize that they don’t get a reward till they reward you with what you truly want in return. This creates respect because you aren’t a pushover and don’t cave into others where they can use you.

I’ll add the second part of this next weekend perhaps. It’s partly because making this too long will be too much and bore people, and also because my time is limited today.